Lockheed to develop fighter jet laser cannon

Lockheed Martin has been awarded $26m by the US government’s Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to develop a high-power fibre laser that will be tested on a fighter jet by 2021.

Lockheed Martin is helping the Air Force Research Lab develop and mature high energy laser weapon systems

The contract to develop the laser is part of AFRL’s Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) program, which is developing all of the technologies required to install and operate a high energy laser weapon on an aircraft.

Last year AFRL also awarded contracts worth a reported $90m to Boeing to develop the pod in which the laser will be housed, and $39m to Northrop Grumman, which is responsible for the beam control system that will track targets, compensate for atmospheric conditions that could distort the laser beam, and focus the outgoing beam on the target.

Lockheed’s portion of the project, known as LANCE (Laser Advancements for Next-generation Compact Environments) will see the development a high-power fibre laser that will disable targets.

Northrop Grumman is responsible for the beam control system

As previously reported by The Engineer, Lockheed has been developing technology based around fibre laser beam combining – a technique in which beams from multiple fibre laser modules are combined to form a single, powerful, high quality beam – for a number of years now.

“Earlier this year, we delivered a 60kW-class laser to be installed on a US Army ground vehicle. It’s a completely new and different challenge to get a laser system into a smaller, airborne test platform,” said Dr. Rob Afzal, senior fellow of laser weapon systems at Lockheed Martin. “The development of high power laser systems like SHiELD show laser weapon system technologies are becoming real. The technologies are ready to be produced, tested and deployed on aircraft, ground vehicles and ships.”

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The YAL-1 was designed to shoot down ICBMs and lacked the range to cover an effective area.
SHiELD is intended to shoot down missiles tracking the aircraft with the laser. Range is much less of an issue when your target is deliberately approaching you.

From “self protect” in “SHiELD” it sounds like it’s meant for protection>attack. I mean if a sensor detects quickly/precisely, wouldn’t a laser be really good at annihilating incoming explosives or even bullets?

How much energy can a conventional bullet expend? Didn’t WW2 Spitfire pilots find that out very quickly that their .303 bullets were akin to a pea-shooter against the cannons that the Me109s had early in the conflict? Surely if the technology can impart most of the output of the laser it could be quite damaging, but I think, as Gareth Page above, that seriously more power would be required and also at combat speed maintaining contact with the target would be extremely difficult